(This started as a post in ~gaming, but quickly became much less about the game and drifted into Meta territory.)
This is a pre-coffee ramble, so my logic's probably pretty flawed (and anyone who's ever kicked my ass in a boardgame would suggest my logic's often flawed).
I'm a boardgamer, and one of my favorite games (and one that's considered a modern classic) is Race for the Galaxy.
Let me explain the rules to you.
Okay, that would be a bad idea.
But let me summarize (and oversimplify -- if you're a fellow gamer, apologies for not taking a deep dive here).
In the game, you have cards that represent planets and technologies, and the goal is to get more valuable planets than the other players. But those same cards also double as the goods the planets and technologies produce.
In other words, the cards that represent value in the game are also the cards that are used to accomplish everything else in the game.
Now let's talk about Nostr and social media clients in general.
Most social media lets you react to a post by reposting or liking (different clients use different terms, but those are the core functions). Both of them are ways to give the post cred of some sort.
(Replying is also an option, of course, but it's separate from the other reactions in that it's an interaction that generates new content.)
Nostr uses both of these but then adds the option to zap. So if you see a post you like, there are three different ways you can tell the creator and the users of the system that you like the post. That's a lot, and leads to some decision lock/analysis paralysis. "I like this post, but should I hit the like button and repost it, or did it add enough value to also zap? And if I'm zapping, I should also be liking, right?"
Enter Stacker News.
Here, the zap does everything (other than replying, which is a different kind of reaction). When I zap a post here, I'm saying that A) its author deserves some sats, B) it's worth boosting/highlighting for other people, and C) that I like it.
In other words, the action that represents value at Stacker News is also the action that's used to accomplish almost everything else here.
And it's a reason that I find SN simpler, not more complicated, than Nostr and legacy social media sites. If I like something, I know exactly the one thing to do to say so.
Every bitcoiner should be on Stacker News. There is literally no 2nd best social media experience.
reply
Absolutely. And every non-bitcoiner should be checking it out. They'll find a great social media experience and may finally become bitcoiners.
reply
Yes but so many are not, so how do we get them here.
reply
64 sats \ 1 reply \ @k00b 17 Mar
I've heard this point about reactions and zaps being overwhelming a few times now. I wouldn't have guessed something like reactions change behavior significantly, but I can see how it does.
My understanding of Nostr the protocol is that it intends to be unopinionated, and never tries to say things "we do things this way because it has better outcomes" except when it says "having no opinion here will lead to a better outcome." Whether intentional or not, it ends up asserting that consistency is overvalued and choice should be maximized. It reminds me of lisp in this way. It's a bit counterintuitive, but having no opinion doesn't mean you get all possible outcomes. It means you get all the outcomes that result from not having an opinion (really cool stuff usually) and excludes all the outcomes that require having an opinion (which can be cool stuff too).
reply
Well, now I know why I never learned to program in Lisp. :-)
(Seriously, though, really like the note that having no opinion, like taking no action, is still something that has an impact.)
reply
There was no Like button, so I zapped you 1 sat. I saw you wrote a lot, it looked good, so I felt like you deserved 1 sat for it. I hope you wrote something good.
(j/k, I did read it first)
reply
Okay, now I kind of wish there was a laugh react button here.
reply
Really nice analogy.
This is an example of "quasi-garbling" a choice set. It's a concept from the economics of information and uncertainty.
Counterintuitively, there are situations where reducing the range of possible signals actually increases the usefulness of those signals. One example is "yes or no" instead of "on a scale of 1 to 5".
As time goes on, I think it's increasingly clear that deciding whether and how much to zap, provides better signal that also deciding whether to like and/or repost.
reply
Yes! It makes sense that this would already have been studied in fields like those. And yeah, deciding to zap, even for a small amount, feels like a more conscious action than just hitting a like button.
As an aside, I think I also recall reading that even scales are better than odd ones because they force people to have an opinion instead of picking the neutral option.
reply
Nice analogy. Race for the Galaxy sounds fun. Is it good for kids?
Every Sunday the kids and I go visit my parents for an early dinner, which is more like a late lunch for us but dinner for my parents, and we usually all play a board game after dinner for a couple hours before we need to leave an pick up my wife from work. So we are always looking to try a new board game provided it is kid friendly (13 and 5- I usually play with my 5 year old so it can be a bit challenging but not too challenging she doesn't understand what is going on).
reply
Hmm. It's definitely good for older kids (your 13-year-old will be fine with it). I'm not sure if it may or may not get too complicated for your younger one (it's largely text-free, but there are symbols to learn: https://boardgamegeekstore.com/cdn/shop/products/pic4500236.png?v=1547445416&width=1800).
It's been a bit since I've had a kid that young, but there's a series from Looney Labs called Fluxx that are a blast for kids, with lots of the chaos they tend to enjoy, but also work well for adults (and each game plays in less than five minutes).
We also used to love a game called Tsuro that's a gorgeous and simple game about building paths: https://media.wired.com/photos/593285ee58b0d64bb35d25f7/master/w_1920,c_limit/Tsuro-tiles.jpg
reply
Great. Thanks.
reply
Stacker News quickly became my number one news and social media platform and I guess it has the potential of what WikiLeaks failed to be.
reply